Russia saw a surge of low-price exports this summer

Gazprom's sales dipped in the first quarter of this year, but was followed by a surge of lower-priced exports

Russia's gas export monopoly Gazprom saw its sales volumes dip in the first quarter of this year, followed by a surge of lower-priced exports in the summer. In the relatively mild Q1 in its home market, customers in the Russian Federation took 5%, or 4.2bn cm, less than in the same quarter of last year. But European sales volumes (excluding the former Soviet Union) were down by 16.2%, from 46.7bn cm to 39.1bn cm while sales to the former Soviet Union (excluding Russia) were down by 21%, or 3.4bn cm. A portion of Gazprom's European exports are still linked to the oil price with a lag of six months or more; and the fall in oil last summer would have started to feed through into gas prices from